


All her smile’s fault

by iriswesttt



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswesttt/pseuds/iriswesttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yet another high school AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Barry was finally getting adventurous, Iris could tell. Or rather she could feel, feel how he was allowing his hands to wander. Under her t-shirt. Finally. They had been kissing the whole afternoon, like many afternoons before, so it was about time.

Iris enjoyed spending the afternoons together.

When they were kids they used to spend them playing. Then they stopped. It was this weird thing when they went from doing everything together to not doing everything together. Then they started high school and there was a while when they didn’t exactly talk to each other.

They were neighbours. Their parents were friends. Her mom and dad would still invite the Allens for dinner every now and again, and they would still go to the Allens for the occasional pizza ever since they built a wooden oven in their backyard. Iris would still get a ride to school with Nora every other day, and her mom would drive them the others, and they rode the bus together in the evenings.

Then, when they turned 16, Iris got a used Honda for her birthday and she would drive Barry to school and drive him back, but they weren’t _friends_.

They talked, it wasn’t like she pretended Barry Allen had seceded to exist, but they didn’t _talk_. It wasn’t like Iris could explain what had happened, they hadn’t ever had an out, and it wasn’t that she thought Barry had turned into a boring person, it just was.

For a while she suspected she had done something wrong, that he had taken something she had done the wrong way, but the more she thought about it the more senseless that seemed.

Still, despite going to school in the same car, they didn’t walk around together at school, mostly they would act like they didn’t know each other, mainly because their friends were not exactly the same (she long suspected Barry didn’t exactly like any of her friends).

He was in the science club or whatever that was called, since freshman year, and Iris was in no club. The principal called Iris into her office the first week of the sophomore year suggesting (actually demanding, but she pretended like she was suggesting) that Iris should be more involved, so she joined the school paper, dragging Linda — who was already on the Lacrosse Team, so she didn’t need to “join in the school” — with her.

Besides, Barry didn’t take her AP English class, and Iris didn’t take any of his AP science ones, except for Biology during their junior year, and when they both refused to dissect the frog, Miss Roberts paired them up with each other, saying they had to write a 10,ooo words essay instead. And then, three days into the assignment, they had found something way more fun than playing hide and seek, or whatever game they used to play when they were kids.

Kissing.

Iris had never kissed before. She was the last girl in her group of friends to, or at least from what the girls had told her she was. The other girls had no problem talking about it either, recounting their kisses from the weekends in detail on Monday mornings, but Iris didn’t like to talk about it.

She enjoyed kissing though.

At the moment, she was thoroughly enjoying Barry’s lips on hers, wet and swollen, and the way he softly sucked her bottom one, dragging his teeth on it, and she was enjoying the way his lips and his cheeks looked so pink, and the way his green eyes were blown up dark and the way his breathing felt on her skin, humid and warm. And his hands, finally wandering up her belly until almost finding her bra and then he pulled away. Chicken.

“What?” she asked as he sat up from his previous laying-on-top-of-her position, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Barry said, wiping the spit from his lips with the back of his hand, “nothing, there’s nothing wrong.”

He was too much of a gentlemen, that was what was wrong.

He apologised the first time he kissed her! Like she hadn’t kissed him back. And the first time that one kiss turned into a whole lot of kissed, on the cheeks and the jaw line and the neck (she really like his neck, she like following his freckles around with her lips), Iris had to pin him down on the couch because he was so nervous that he wouldn’t stop fidgeting.

Sometimes she wondered if he actually wanted that, wanted her, if he liked what they were doing. He seemed to — or at least she had learned (with a surprised gasp the first time) to tell that _his body_ did — but he was always so resistant.

Iris rolled her eyes at him and, since he wasn’t going to, she pulled her t-shirt off.

It was a new bra, she bought it so Barry would see it. She had taken Francine questioning her as to why exactly she needed a purple lacy bra, and Iris had sworn to her that it was only because she thought it was pretty, and she hated lying to her mom, especially when it seemed to be in vain; it had been a week already and Barry seemed nowhere closer to taking a good peek at it, so she had to take matters into her own hands.

His eyes widened with surprise and he looked away, focusing on the TV, which streamed loud in the background.

Iris liked making out with the TV on so she wouldn’t have to listen to the sounds Barry got out of her. Though she didn’t mind one bit hearing the sounds she got out of him, or the way they vibrated on his throat and belly.

But at the moment Barry wouldn’t face her. He could be so exasperating sometimes.

“Barry,” she called and he looked back at her, eyes traveling down her body slowly, swallowing hard. Iris was at the point of grabbing his hands and placing them over her boobs but then he travelled the pad of his fingers lightly down her arm and then up her belly, reaching her bra this time and this was better. Much better.

She reached for the hem of his t-shirt, pulling it up, in a _I showed you mine now you show me yours_ sort of deal, and Iris decided she liked his goosebumps, feeling them on his skin, under her fingers, on his arms. And she liked his skin on her skin, and pushing her fingers down his ribs, finding the spot right between two of them where Barry was soft and she could press in, and when she pulled him back down on top of her, _holy shit_ , she found she liked kissing while his belly rubbed on hers, stealing her breath away.

 

* * *

 

Barry watched as Iris crossed the food court, Linda by her side. He couldn’t help the smile on his lips.

He liked to watch Iris moving and then remember the way she moved under him, and then on top of him, circularly, less than 24 hours before. In her purple lacy bra, and Barry could see her nipples through it, round and dark, and perfect, like the whole rest of her. And that hadn’t been a feverish dream.

She had her hair in a braid today, she had explained how to braid it to him before, one afternoon that, after spending way too long with her head over his pillow the braid had come half undone, and he watched as she braided it back before leaving him.

It was named after a country, the braid was, Barry was sure, and whenever they were kissing, Barry appreciated how it kept the hair away from his mouth, or their mouths, and today he appreciated how it kept her hair out of her face so he could see her cheeks and her lips fully as she smiled at something Linda said, bending her head down slightly. Cheeks and lips that would have been covered by a curtain of her hair had she wore it down.

Iris had the most incredible smile. It wasn’t something Barry could fully explain, he thought no one would ever be able to fully explain since it very probably defied the laws of physic, slowing down time.

It was all her smile’s fault, really.

Barry was about 12 when he noticed he liked making Iris smile more than anything else in the world and then he knew she had him and that her smile would most definitely be his undoing.

_Why are you looking at Iris like that?_

He could still hear Emma outing the words, he could still feel them echoing through him and see her puzzled face. Emma didn’t like him very much, even clueless 12 years-old Barry could tell. She would always drag Iris out in some corner to tell her girl-stuff, code for Barry-can’t-hear-it, and then one day, she caught Barry staring at Iris’s smile and she pointed it out, and his heart sank so low down that Barry could feel it reaching his stomach and making him sick.

He couldn’t help looking though.

“What are you looking at?”

This time it was Cisco, and he didn’t have the same accusatory look in his eyes, but Barry still blushed as he focused down on his food again, promising himself he wouldn’t look at her anymore. A promise that lasted about as long as ten-seconds and a _nothing_ as an answer to Cisco.

“Right,” he said, “nothing that goes by the name of Iris West.”

Barry shushed him. Cisco could be loud sometimes. Even though she was really far away and the room was noisy and busy, Barry really didn’t want Iris hearing and chancing a glance at him. He still remembered how embarrassment crept up her cheeks that day years ago. In all the years Barry had known her, he saw Iris blushing three times, and that was one of them, and it was his fault and it made things worse; she couldn’t really bring herself to face him after Emma’s question.

The last thing he wanted at the moment was for her to feel that exposed again.

“Dude, you have to do something about it! It’s not healthy to keep it all inside, you know?”

Barry rolled his eyes at him. Cisco didn’t know. Barry hadn’t told anyone yet. They hadn’t talked about it themselves.

Iris would come over, they would do some of their homework, or none of their homework, or all their homework sometimes, and they would talk about stuff, like about some boring book Iris absolutely thought Barry should read and that he hadn’t picked up yet (though he liked having something of hers sitting on his desk, and he liked how she had drawn a little heart besides her name on the back of the cover), about some new band he had found over the weekend, about nothing, about everything, except about what they were doing.

They just somehow always seemed to end up laying against some flat surface, the couch, or his bed, or the ground, kissing, and stuff.

Like the stuff from yesterday, which was most brilliant stuff.

Who knew skin felt so good? Iris had perfect skin, soft, and smooth and warm. And she got no spots on her pretty face, like Barry did. But she did have a little bit of freckles on her nose. You would have to look very close to see them, and Barry had forgotten about them in all that time they seemed to avoid getting too close to each other, but now he could see them again. He could kiss the bridge of her nose and appreciate them in a whole different way than before.

But he didn’t exactly want to tell Cisco he had done something about it (even though he was still not quite sure how they had reached that point where his lips on hers was suddenly something that happened, that was acceptable and recurrent). Barry was afraid that if he talked about it out loud, it would disappear, kinda like the reverse of _I do believe in fairies._

“You ride to school with her everyday, you seem able to speak to her at biology class, it’s not that difficult, just come up to her and say, Iris —”

“Shut up!” Barry interrupted before Cisco could finish it, looking around to see if there was someone at their table paying them any mind, and there didn’t seem to be, so Barry concluded, hoping that that would conclude the topic of conversation as well;

“Somethings are better left to the imagination.”

That was a lie. Not in his wildest dream, literal dreams, and Barry had many of those about Iris, or daydreams, he was always good on those too, he could have properly imagined how she would feel under his hands, how she would taste under his lips. The little gasps and chokes she would let out every now and again, and how Barry would enjoy cataloguing those, trying the same thing again, checking if it got the same effect, like behind her right ear, she liked when he sucked there, and she also liked when he licked her collarbones, but she would always giggle if he licked her nose instead. Her laugh was good too. It was such a great sound.

He chanced another glance at her, and this time her eyes met his, and she graced him with a smile, not for any reason other than that her eyes met his, and he smiled too, unable to control his lips and get them to behave, as she looked away. Barry checked Cisco, way too occupied with his hot dog to notice anything.

Reality was so much better than anything his brain could ever come up with, than any fantasy he could possibly have, but Cisco didn’t need to know that Barry knew that anyway.

  

* * *

 

Iris was still tingling when she walked through the front door. 5:45. Right on time.

She had about fifteen minutes until her mom came back from the paper. Which meant she had another 15 minutes of thinking about Barry and about kissing him, about how he had made a habit out of leaving a cute note on her locker everyday, about how this time, he was the one to take her t-shirt off, after taking his own t-shirt off, and how he let his hands up her inner thighs, (they were clothed and denim wasn’t the best fabric to allow much feeling through it, but still. Maybe she should wear shorts for the next time, even though the weather wasn’t really looking like shorts. Maybe if she wore a skirt with tights, that would be the best make out and weather appropriate option).

Or she would have her 15 minutes if Wally wasn’t on the sofa, watching something loud, and questioning her;

“Where were you?”

“Nowhere,” Iris told him.

“Nowhere meaning Barry Allen’s?”

“No,” she said, and having a baby brother was so annoying sometimes; “nowhere meaning none of you business.”

She gave up going to her bedroom and locking herself up there and daydreaming to very loud music until her mom arrived, to sit by his side instead, reaching for the remote and searching for something to watch, and when Wally didn’t complain Iris knew there was something wrong.

She turned to face him and he was looking at her instead of the TV and when he spoke, he did in an uncharacteristic soft voice;

“Do you know people at school are talking about you?”

“What?” she asked in confusion; “freshmen are talking about me?”

“About you and Barry,” Wally told her; “they are saying you are… you know…”

“No, I don’t know! What are they saying?”

But there was suddenly a cold spreading through her. She told no one about the little detour their studying sessions had taken, and she hadn’t exactly asked for Barry not to, she just assumed he wouldn’t. It wasn’t like she was hiding it, but it also wasn’t like he suddenly started talking to her at school either, or having lunch at her table, so she assumed he didn’t want for people to know.

She guessed she didn’t want people to know. Mostly because she didn’t like talking about that stuff, and it was no one’s business.

“Well, Julie Brown in my english class, she asked if you and Barry are, you know…”

“I know what, Wally? Come on! Spill it out.”

“If you and Barry are fucking.”

So much for being a gentleman now. It wasn’t just telling people, it was straight up lying about it too.

Somehow the Barry who couldn’t even look at her shirtless and the Barry who went around saying they were fucking wouldn’t meet in her head, but Iris should have learned all those years ago that the Barry she thought she knew wasn’t the real Barry.

The real Barry was the one who decided he would stop having lunch at her table in the first place. The one who made her cry because he would always have an excuse to not do stuff together anymore, and just because he was delicate when he was holding her, just because when he kissed her, he seemed so reverent about it, just because when they were alone he was sweet and kind and perfect, it didn’t mean he actually was those things.  

As Iris didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, this horrible sickness taking over her, making it hard to breath in a completely different way than Barry had left her breathless just a few minutes ago, Wally continued;

“She does the Chemistry Lab Club thing with Barry, and she said people already knew and she wanted to make sure.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you weren’t fucking him and then I told Mrs. Black she was copying my work. Bitch.”

She could feel the stupid tears filling her eyes. How could Barry do something like this? Even if they didn’t talk much, or ever, about what they were doing, she still expected that the least he could do was not lie and brag about it to the nerds in his stupid club, who would then spread it out to the rest of the school.

“Are you?” Wally asked.

“Am I what?”

“Are you and Barry, you know…”

And that was when she knew it was really terrible. If Wally wasn’t sure enough she wasn’t, it was really bad.

“No, we are not!”

Wally shot her an incredulous look, and when Iris didn’t justify any further, he added;

“When we were little, Barry came to play here but now you go there because I’m here and at the Allen’s, there’s no one else home.”

“We’re studying,” Iris justified.

“Yeah, anatomy studying,” Wally said, jiggling his eyebrows up and down, and if it were a different situation, if she hadn’t been completely betrayed, then she would have found humour in his comment, as it was all her concentration was going into not being sick in the middle of the living room rug.

Wally seemingly noticed her face, but before he had time to comment on anything she said;

“I don’t feel very well — I — my bedroom”

And after she did lock her bedroom door, so she could allow for her tears to fall.


	2. Chapter 2

Iris was uncharacteristically quiet the whole ride to school, and maybe it was Barry’s imagination, but there was some kind of judgement in Wally’s eyes when he greeted him that morning. That, added to the fact that his texts to Iris the night before were met with stone cold silence response, should have been enough clue, but Barry could never think straight when it came to Iris so he needed until they were in front of the entering of the school parking lot, and Iris instructing Wally to get out of the car so she could talk to Barry for him to realise there was something seriously wrong.

She drove around the block to an empty blind alley and then, after turning the engine off, finally looked at him and asked;

“Who did you tell?”

Her face harsh as she watched his reaction with sharp eyes, and it was such a difference from her usual soft state; she normally didn’t have any edges, so it was weird seeing her showing this side to him.

“What?” Barry asked, because he truthfully had no idea what it could be.

They were fine the afternoon before, she had come around and they had spend a good hour kissing and she seemed to have enjoyed it as much as him when she left, so Barry was trying very hard to put together a reason for her anger.

“Who did you tell,” she repeated; “who did you tell?”

“Tell what?” he asked.

“Tell about us,” she said, eyes big on him, and it was easy to lose concentration when looking into her in the eyes, it was easy to forget everything, including what she was asking, and just relish on it, dark and warm and honest and earnest.

He could tell though, studying her eyes, that she was waiting for his answer. Iris was usually mellow which could in turn make it easy to forget that that was because she wanted to be, and it wasn’t like she was being molded or convinced, so whenever she wouldn’t back down it was all the more scary how sharp she could be.

“About —,” Barry repeated, trying to concentrate; “no one! I told no one!”

“Well, people at school know, and I haven’t told a soul so it has to have been you!”

“No! Iris, no! I haven’t told anyone!”

Barry tried retracing his steps in his brain, he was being so careful to not let anything slip, and he was sure it hadn’t, he hadn’t told Cisco, he hadn’t told anyone. He had also not heard a comment from anyone, but then again, Iris was way more popular than him, so she had many more friends to tell her they had heard something whereas Barry had Cisco and Cisco paid even less attention to what people were talking about than Barry did.

“Well, Julie Brown knows. The same Julie Brown who I had no idea existed until Wally told me that she is in his English Literature class,” and that was a problem because Barry knew exactly who Julie Brown was. And apparently Iris went from not knowing that Julie Brown existed to knowing that Barry knew exactly who she was;

“The same Julie Brown that is apparently in your lame science club.”

But all Barry ever told Julie Brown on his life was that she shouldn’t store reactive chemicals next to each other, and helped her once or twice with some of the experiments she had to do and that he had already done freshman year.

“Iris — no, I —”

“Well, it wasn’t me. I told no one, and we never talk at school for longer than 5 minutes, and it’s not like I’ve ever touched you in public, so it’s not like anyone could have figured it out,” she argued.

And those were all good points, but unless Barry was going under some hallucinatory state it hadn’t been him either, but Iris didn’t even catch a breath, and Barry felt breathless for her as she concluded;

“So unless you have an alternative explanation, the only one I can find is that you told your club buddies that you are fucking me.”

He stayed quiet for a bit, trying to find the words to defend himself without attacking her in return.

She should know him enough to know he would never lie about this, to know that even if it were true he would never tell anyone, he would never be disgusting and brag about it, but she was clearly feeling attacked, so him being hurt by her accusations instead of trying understand how something like this this could have happened would only add injury. So finally he said;  

“Iris, I would never say that. Never! It’s not even the truth.”

“I know it’s not the truth, but no one else does, do they?”

“Iris —”

But she cut him off, turning the engine back on and telling him;

“It doesn’t matter. I just — I really don’t feel like seeing you anymore, so, I thought I would extend the courtesy of telling you,” she told him, and Barry thought that a punch on the gut would have hurt less.

He felt sick, scared to ask her what exactly she meant, scare to even let _she’s breaking up with me_ to form on his brain, but then she was saying, eyes on the road in front of her, refusing to face him;  

“Not that you deserve it, cause it’s not like you told me you were breaking up with me the first time around.”

“What? What?” he asked her because he had never broken up with her, he would never break up with Iris, not when he was lucky enough to have her, not when she seemingly saw something in him, but she never answered his question, only let out an annoyed _puff_ , displeasure on her eyes, and Barry thought maybe she felt sick too because she never even locked her car, she was off before Barry could grab his bag and she walked away before he could even breath in again.

 

* * *

 

Iris had never been filled with so much anger before. She never knew this much anger could fit inside of her, but she was angry.

Angry at stupid bully Tony Woodward for as good as telling the whole school that Iris was sucking Barry Allen’s dick. Now, besides having to deal with the fact that Tony would ask her out at least once a week she also had to deal with him coming up to her in the middle of the food court, in front of everyone, all the Juniors and all the Freshmen that had their lunch break at the same time and listening to him saying _I expected a lot of things from you, West, but that you would suck Barry Allen off wasn’t one of them._ Who did he think he was to expect anything from her anyway?

Angry at Barry for trying to interfere and defend her, but only after things had gone completely out of control. Only after he lied to someone and started the whole thing himself.

Angry at herself for not being able to control her temper and telling Tony she did suck Barry _until the last drop_.

After that _whore_ was the nicest name they were calling her.

Angry at herself for trusting Barry Allen once again in the first place. She should have known better. She should have known that someone who can leave you so easily, like he left her when they were kids, would disappoint again. It was only a matter of time.

Angry at herself for caring about what those people thought of her. About what they were saying about her.

So saying her Friday had been a disaster was a euphemism. She couldn’t swallow her food after that. She spent the rest of the day locked in the girls’ bathroom by the library, because that was the one they knew how to lock, telling Linda everything, and crying until dehydration. She didn’t even know she could produce that many tears.

(Linda did make her smile though, when she said, _well, fuck Barry Allen and Tony Woodward, or better yet don’t fuck them!_ But that was about all the smiles Iris seemed to have left in her, even though Iris had to admit that telling Linda everything felt like such a relief.)

Then she made Linda drive the boys home and then come back to pick her up because looking at Barry Allen seemed like a terrible life choice. She needed the weekend so she could gather her strength and manage to look at him without feeling like she was gonna be sick.

She hoped the weekend was all she needed.

Then she locked herself into her room only opening the door when her mom threatened to knock it to the ground; Iris managed to convince her she was coming down with something, so she wasn’t bothered much further, and only had to open the door twice, once to take the tea Francine made her and once to return the empty mug and promise she had actually eaten the toasts and drank the tea.

Saturday wasn’t looking much brighter either.

The worse part of it was that there was an Allen’s dinner party. Her mom had spent the afternoon baking brownies, and Wally, bless him, had managed to sneak some of it away and bring it to her, in her room, but not even the brownies were looking appetizing enough; Iris took one bite at them before deciding that food wasn’t really what she needed.

She needed her bed, where she wasn’t planning on leaving it anytime soon.

That was until she heard another knock. Concerned family was feeling suddenly better on paper.

“Iris, please, open the door.”

She dragged herself out of bed and opened the door slightly, so to allow a peek inside, and conjured her best sick-voice as she begged;

“Mom, I’m not feeling well, please, don’t make me go.”

“What are you feeling exactly?”

And that was when Iris knew Francine was no longer buying it. She had sensed the lie and now she would sniff around and get Iris to confess. All her life, her mom always made her confess somehow.

“It’s just a bug,” Iris tried, because the more elaborated the lie, the deeper she would dig herself into it and lesser the chance of getting out of it.

“A bug?” her mom asked her, eyebrows high; “It has nothing to do with the fact that apparently the school is calling you names?”

So they were having a talk about it. There was no escaping it.

Iris turned around to go back to bed because standing up seemed like too much effort, and her confirmation on just how serious Francine was taking it came when she closed the door behind her after walking into Iris’s room.

“Wally?” Iris asked, and she was going to have a talk with him as well. She knew just how much of video game he played in the afternoons, and she kept that information to herself, and now the traitor had slipped it to their mom. He was about to pay.

“No, not Wally,” Francine told her, but the really surprising part came next; “Barry told Nora, Nora told me.”

“I should have known he was a mamma’s boy,” Iris mumbled.

The school wasn’t even talking about him. In fact, when she told Tony Woodward she was sucking Barry, she watched as a junior whose name Iris didn’t know, but was sure he was part of the football team, approached Barry to pat him on the back.

Girls got called names and boys got praised. It wasn’t like Iris was expecting anything else, but Barry should have taken the praise and kept his damn mouth shut.

“Iris!” Francine reprimanded her.

“Mom,” Iris answered in the same tone, which caused Francine’s nostrils to flare and Iris knew she was controlling herself, making a real exercise to not lose her calm, and probably to not question just how much of the rumors were true.

When Iris first got her period, it earned her a talk as well, and her mom had made her promise that she would tell her first, before having sex, and Iris had agreed, so she knew Francine must had been obsessing with it.

She took a deep breath, pulling the chair that Iris had in front of her desk to face the bed and sitting on it, saying;

“All right. Ok. We should have a conversation about this now.”

“Mom —” Iris tried to escape. The last thing she felt at the moment was like talking about Barry Allen.

“I’m not judging you, Iris, I want to talk. I want for you to be able to talk to me.”

“Ok.”

“And I want you to know that having sex or not having sex doesn’t change your value one bit. It doesn’t make you any less worthy.”

“I know, mom,” and she couldn’t help the eye-roll. The whole reason she had owned up to the rumors instead of fighting it was because she knew it didn’t.

But it was different for girls.

“Then, please, don’t lie to me about this anymore.”

“I haven’t lied,” Iris told her, trying to control the offended tone in her voice.

“The purple bra?” Francine reminded her, and it so wasn’t like that. Iris just wanted to be prepared. But she knew the bra was about to come bite her in the ass eventually, so Iris justified;

“I just wanted for him to see it, that’s all.”

“What does that mean?” Francine asked her and sometimes Iris hated having a detective and an investigative reporter as parents; it was like they could sense the lie a thousand miles away, and they always asked the questions that required elaboration. She could never get away with a yes or no answer.

“We were — dating, I guess,” Iris had learned this trick over the years. Adding an _I guess_ at the end of a sentence added room to take things back, to not give a definitive answer.

Also, not many words. Three or four. Five if you counted the _I guess_ were the amount to aim.  

“Dating?”

“We never had sex,” she said. Four words, but Francine’s eyebrows raise and her lips pressed together made Iris add; “we just kissed.”

“Kissed without a t-shirt on?”

“Yeah, I mean, it was just kissing.”

“Without a t-shirt.”

“Why does it matter?” Iris questioned. Because wasn’t she the one who just said that it didn’t?

“It doesn’t,” Francine assured her, and then she asked; “are you planning on having sex?”

“No,” Iris said, because she wasn’t, she was getting nowhere near that boy’s dick, but the eyebrows raised again, so Iris added; “I was, but Barry is an asshole —”

More than four words. Big mistake.

“Iris!” her mom said, like she was surprised Iris knew the word.

“So I’m not anymore,” Iris concluded, and she watched as Francine took measured breaths in, so she told her mom; “you are so not ok with this. I can tell.”

“I just think you are very young, and I don’t want for you to take a step that you’ll regret later.”

It was funny how her parents always thought she was too young, too young to have an extended curfew, too young to get the tattoo she wanted, but she was old enough to drive, so she was old enough to take care of her car, and she was old enough to have a summer job if she wanted a new laptop when her old one literally broke down. Too young to have fun but not to have responsibilities.

“Don’t worry,” she assured Francine, because the truth was, she couldn’t picture herself having sex anytime soon, mostly because she had found that boys could hurt her very deeply, so she would rather not;  

“The chances of me ever getting near his — well, they are gone, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Does that mean you guys are not together anymore?”

And Iris would laugh if she had it in her.

“I guess he didn’t tell Nora that part then.”

“What did he do?” and Iris could spot the exact moment when she turned into protective-mom, instead of concerned-mom.

“He told his friends he was — that we were having sex and they spread it to the school, so I dumped him.”

Francine seemed to ponder the information for a moment and then she asked;

“Are you sure? I mean, maybe it wasn’t him, and the rumor started some other way.”

“I’m sure.”

“All right,” her mom nodded. “Do you want me to cancel the pizza at the Allens? I can stay here with you and we can have mint ice-cream for dinner.”

“No,” Iris said, because the truth was she didn’t feel like eating and she didn’t feel like company either, and she felt even less like making a big deal out of it and canceling last minute would make some noise, for sure, so she justified; “I don’t feel like eating anything.”

“Not even ice-cream?” Francine questioned, a little worried, Iris could tell.

“No. You should go, mom. I just wanna be alone.”

“All right. I’ll bring you pizza then.”

“I don’t want pizza.”

“And I’ll take my cellphone so you can call me if you need anything.”

“I won’t.”

“Just in case,” she said getting up from the chair and giving Iris a look that made her smile.

_Just let me have this, Iris_ , her mom would say every now and again, _you don’t need to keep reminding me how much you don’t need me anymore_. That was the look she gave her, so Iris let her have it;

“Ok.”

And then it suddenly hit her, all the pain again, but a different one this time. It wasn’t anger, it was this deep sadness; Barry and her were done. Her first boyfriend, and he was never even officially her boyfriend, but it did hurt all the same.

“It’s ok to hurt, honey,” her mom said, pulling her into a hug;  “it doesn’t make you weak.”

“Please don’t tell dad,” Iris asked. The last thing she wanted was her dad involved in any of it. She wouldn’t be able to take the disappointment in her that would take place after his anger towards Barry and Tony and everyone else would dissipate.

“I won’t,” her mom assured her. “Are you sure you don’t want for me to stay?”

“I’m sure,” Iris said.


	3. Chapter 3

“Mom, I told you I don’t want pizza.”

Iris’s voice sounded almost… _defeated_. It made things worse. It made it all hurt even more.

“Not your mom,” Barry told her through her closed bedroom door.

It had been a while since he had last been there. They were probably 12. All the other times he had been to the Wests since then, he had never gone upstairs again.

They used to spend hours in Iris’s bedroom. Lying on her fluffy rug, playing feet war and board games. Clue was Iris’s favourite, and the summer when they were 11 and it rained everyday in the afternoon for two months straight, they spent all of their evenings playing Clue and listening to terrible songs. Every time it rained on summers’ afternoons, Barry was always reminded of that. If he concentrated enough, he could smell those days. Damped grass and cookies Iris had just learned to bake.

Seeing her bedroom door made him miss her, miss _them,_ miss who he was with her, even more than he had been.

“Barry, go away,” she said.

The slices of pizza he brought over to her looked sad. It wasn’t like he was feeling much like eating them, so he couldn't exactly blame her if she didn’t want them either.

“I’m sorry, Iris,” he said, because he was.

He was sorry about how out of hand everything had gotten. About how unfair it was that the entire school was suddenly talking about her, all they seemed able to talk about was she. Calling her all those names that made Barry sick just to think about.

It also hadn’t escaped him how no one seemed to think those things of him. People had asked him all kinds of invasive questions, questions Barry had avoided answering, questions that made him deeply uncomfortable, but it was like all of a sudden Barry was cool, without having to do anything, and it had cost all the respect they once had for Iris, like a trade. But Barry had no interest for this trade, he wanted things back the way they were before anyone knew about it.   

“Sorry because you opened your damn mouth? Twice?” she asked him, and his suspicions that his mom had told Francine everything were confirmed at once; “Sorry because now the whole school is calling me a whore?”

“Iris, please, let me in?” he begged.

“No! I still don’t wanna see you.”

“All right,” he said, he figured that was her prerogative anyway.

“Look,” he tried again, sitting against her door, placing the plate of pizza by his side; “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry because it’s not fair to you how this whole thing blew up. You don’t deserve it, any of it —”

“No one deserves it, Barry,” she interrupted him; “not even if it were true.”

“I know. I know.”

They grew quiet for a while and Barry tried to think of what to say, tried to figure out if she wanted to know how this whole thing started, until Iris asked;

“Are you gonna tell me who did you tell after all? I think I do deserve to know that.”

“Julie Brown,” Barry told her.

Julie had come up to Barry after the lunch-happening, she had tears in her eyes and kept going _this is all my fault, this is all my fault_ , until Barry managed to calm her down and then she told him how she noticed how Iris and him seemed to be together, by piecing the conversations Barry and Cisco always had about Iris with the fact that she saw Barry putting notes in Iris’s locker.

“She came to talk to me yesterday, after lunch,” Barry said; “she said she’s sorry.”

“You told her?” Iris asked, incredulously.

“No, it wasn’t like that. She overheard Cisco and I —”

“So you told Cisco?”

“I didn’t,” Barry said. He was doing such a poor job in explaining it. If only he could see her.

“Please, open the door?” he asked again.

“No,” Iris responded simply.

“Ok, look, she just — Cisco likes to grill me about you,” he told her, because she didn’t know, and sometimes it blew his mind how there were things about his life Iris didn’t know, it felt like she knew everything.

“I didn’t tell him about us,” he continued; “I wouldn’t, but Julie overheard Cisco going on about how I had to do something, take action, and she said she saw how I put notes in your locker every day and she told Tony because apparently she likes him —”

“What does that mean?” Iris interrupted him.

“Yeah, I know,” Barry agreed, happy they could talk again; “I was surprised too, I mean, who knew someone could like Tony Woodward?”

“No, what does that mean, Cisco likes to grill you about me?” she asked.

“Well, yeah, because he knows I’m in love with you.”

Barry only noticed what exactly he had said when Iris opened the door and his back was suddenly left without support.

He got up gracelessly, fighting his own awkwardness, almost stepping on the plate of pizza, to see Iris, eyes big on him, questioning;

“You’re in love with me?”

“Shit! I wasn’t supposed to tell you like this,” he said, because, _great move, Barry! So romantic! So the way everyone wants to hear those words, through a closed door_.

“You’re in love with me?” Iris asked again.

“Yeah, Iris,” and now he might as well just tell her; “I loved you since we were kids. Since always. I realised it when I was 12 but I — I think I always did.”

He watched as Iris’s eyes filled with tears, and he desperately tried to figure out what that meant.

“Then why did you — why did you do that?” she asked, her pretty face in a confused expression; “why did you stop talking to me?”

“I was scared,” Barry said, and he knew it really didn’t justify, but it was the truth anyway.

“Scared of me?”

“No, I — of people noticing.”

“Emma?” Iris asked, confirming that she also noticed that, he wasn’t imagining it all along like he suspected, doubting himself, sometimes.

“And my mom and your mom too,” Barry said, because; “I heard them talking one day. I was ashamed, I don’t know, embarrassed that it was so obvious. Scared that you would notice too, that you wouldn’t want me, that you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

Iris shook her head like he was telling her the most senseless thing, and he long since knew that it had been very stupid, but he had spent the last four years trying to find a way to fix what his 12 year old self had done and coming up empty every time.

“You hurt me,” Iris told him, and the confirmation of it hit him like a punch, leaving him breathless in the most unpleasant way.

“I think I hurt myself too,” he said, and he knew it didn’t make anything better, and it was his own damn fault, but it was true, and maybe a little comforting to know she wasn’t hurting alone after all.

“You were my best friend, Barry. And then one day you wouldn’t sit with me at lunch.”

Barry reached for her hands, taking them in his, interlacing their fingers, and Iris allowed it, so he told her;

“You were my best friend too,” and then he thought about the last weeks, when they spent every afternoon together, and how easy everything was when he was with her, so he added; “you still are, if you would like that.”

Iris looked down at their hands and then up into his eyes, from under her eyelashes, and asked;

“Does that mean you wanna sit with me at lunch?” and there was playfulness in the question, and Barry was washed with a relief at that.

“Yes, I wanna sit with you always. Anytime you’ll have me.”

“Are you sure? I mean, haven’t you heard? I’m damaged goods.”

And even though he knew she was joking, it still made his heart ache at all the mess made of it, and all the unfairness, and at how he couldn’t help but feel that was somehow his fault.

“And ironically I’m not,” he said.

“Why would you be? I was the one sucking your dick.”

Which reminded him of how he still didn’t understand why exactly she would say that, why add fuel to it.

“Why did you say that to Tony?” Barry finally asked.

“Because I was damned either way,” Iris said, raising her shoulders at him; “if I denied it, people would still think I did it.”

“Well, that was hot,” he said, because out of all the stuff coursing through his brain at that moment, part of it was definitely how hot she looked and sounded.  

“Was it?” she asked him with a smile and Barry brushed her hair behind her ears and confirmed, placing a little kiss on her bottom lip;

“Yeah.”

“And you won’t hurt me anymore?” Iris asked, pulling away.

“I promise.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey, babe, how has been your day so far?” Iris asked Barry as he placed his tray next to hers, sitting by her side on the bench, on her table, at lunch. For the first time. Well, first time since they were kids anyway.

She meant the _babe_ and the question as a whole as an ironic one, but it may have sounded less ironic than intended. Or at least that was what Linda’s expression seemed to be telling her.

Barry apparently understood it though; he answered her on the same tone she had questioned him;

“Great! Haven’t you heard? I’m the school’s hero because I got my dick sucked. Yours?”

“Great!” she said, stealing one of his fries; “I’m the school’s whore because I sucked your dick.”

Barry wrapped his arms around her, bringing Iris closer to him, and he placed a little kiss on her temple and murmured in her ear;

“How are you really?”

She looked up at him from under her eyelashes and he had his eyes on her, the same earnest expression they would assume sometimes, kissing times mostly, impressed on them now, green and bright. Iris had noticed how the expression usually seemed somehow mismatched to what they were doing, but she liked his eyes like that anyway. She liked how soft they would turn when he was looking at her. Like he was looking at something precious and delicate.

“I’m fine,” she assured him.

“Yeah?”

“It will blow over,” she said. “Eventually. I hope.”

Barry was watching her carefully and Iris couldn’t help but smile at it, which in turn, got a smile out of him, a bashful one, and he turned pink before burying his nose in the crook of her neck.

It was weird going back to touching Barry. When they weren’t alone that was. They used to hold hands and touch each other all the time when they were kids, but it somehow didn’t feel much like a statement. Not even the one time they were ten and decided on playing a game that meant walking around the whole day with their arms linked. It didn’t last much anyway that day, just until one of them — her, if Iris remembered correctly — had to pee.

Now she felt watched. And not just by Linda, who seemed to analyse every single glance to the last detail (Iris knew there was a talk coming there), but by everyone. By the whole school.

“You changed tables,” Cisco pointed out, sliding by Linda’s side, interrupting Iris’s thought process before she could actually decide if the scandal was worth a kiss.

“Yeah,” Barry said, like it was nothing.

“Dude, tell me stuff like that beforehand, please! I don’t want to have lunch with Nick and those guys,” Cisco said, but he was already digging into his food, not really looking much bothered by the change.

“Sorry,” Barry said, but it was one of his you-wanna-hear-it-so-I’ll-tell-you sorries, Iris could tell. And apparently so could Cisco; he rolled his eyes at Barry and then turned to face Linda, saying;

“I’m Cisco.”

“Linda.”

“Iris,” Iris said because officially she hadn’t met Cisco as of yet.

“Barry,” Barry said, mimicking her little wave, which she was already regretting, so she punched him in the shoulder for good measure, to let him know she did not appreciate the public teasing, and Barry moved disproportionately to it, grabbing her offending hand and telling her; “ow! That hurt.”

And even with all the gossip and the people watching them like they were in a zoo, Iris could tell he was happy; Barry got silly whenever he was happy. And then, without really thinking through what she was about to do, she pulled Barry to her and placed a kiss on his bottom lip.

Barry instantly opened his mouth to it, darting the tip of his tongue into her mouth and Iris figured that despite having not discussed just how exactly they were publicly behaving, he didn’t mind much being watched. She allowed her eyes to close into it and figured she didn’t mind much being watched either.

“Oh no, you guys can’t PDA at lunch!” Cisco interrupted; “I’m eating here,” he pointed out as if they were ruining his appetite.

“Sorry,” Iris said, placing another little kiss, now on the corner of Barry’s mouth; “but I got no reputation left to uphold.”

“Oh, yeah,” Barry agreed, sliding his fingers down her arms; “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty freeing,” Iris pointed out.

But they didn’t kiss again, not until Iris pulled Barry into a girls’ bathroom on their way to biology, and after a surprised _yelp,_ Barry caught up pretty fast, pressing her between himself and the door, giving her a wet kiss and Iris had to pull him back by the hair so she could catch her breath.

There was this weird desperation in kissing and Iris never expected that, it was like doing what she wanted didn’t completely satisfy her, but made her want more instead.

After Barry brought her pizza on Saturday night, they ended up spending a good while kissing, to make up for the lack of it the day before, and then they had fallen asleep on her bed. Much to Iris’s surprise, her mom had somehow allowed that, she hadn’t woken them up after undoubtedly seeing it, she had actually close Iris’s bedroom door, but on Sunday morning had been all ready, waiting for them with pancakes and a speech ready to go. About how before anything could happen, Iris would have to go to the doctor and they would have to talk about it, and not take rash decisions, and listening to it with Barry by her side felt somehow extra humiliating, but nothing compared to listening to Nora’s speech on the same topic about an hour later.

Besides that, they had spent the rest of the day surrounded by their families and it wasn’t the same as being surrounded by people at school that thought she was already sucking Barry anyway. Iris couldn’t bring herself to touch him in front of her parents and his parents, and she noticed Barry refrained from it as well, so she missed him. He missed her too, he was making that plenty clear now.

“So…” Iris started, but Barry’s lips muffled what she was about to tell him.

“So?” he asked, pulling away.

“My mom texted me that she scheduled an appointment for me on Friday.”

“An appointment?” he asked, and Iris could tell he wasn’t concentrating. Apparently there was something very interesting about her collarbones today.

“A doctor’s appointment,” she said. That got him to stop.

“Oh, right. Right,” he mumbled, turning pink all over again. And after a deep breath, he asked her; “do you want me to come with you?”

“No, I really don’t,” she said. He had the most absurd thoughts sometimes. “I’m just saying, I think we should probably wait till then anyway and maybe I should go on the pill or something…” she added, pondering about it herself as well.

Barry’s eyes turned big on her and he took a step back, asking;

“Oh, oh! You — does that mean — you wanna, have sex?”

And he uttered the words slowly, like he was surprised about it, like they hadn’t talk to her mom and his mom about it. Like they had never taken each other’s clothes off.

“Yeah,” Iris answered him, and because now she considered she might have been reading him wrong all along and she asked; “don’t you?”

His hands jumped to the nape of his neck and he said it like it was taking a huge effort to get the words out;

“Yeah, I do, I mean, if you want that too — yeah, and we can wait Friday — we should wait, and like, condoms, I should buy condoms as well — I mean besides the pill — if you think you should take it that is.”

Iris smiled as she pulled him to her again, giving him another kiss because sometimes he could be so cute that he deserved it, and then she said;

“All right, anything else to add?”

He seemed to ponder on it for a few seconds and then, after a kiss, with his lips traveling down her neck, he told her;

“I think I’m gonna enjoy this kissing at school thing.”

“I already am,” Iris said. There wasn’t much need to add anything to that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to withaflashoflove for once again being my beta and to mmtion for letting me use her words as inspiration!


End file.
